Photos. https://lhyc.org.uk/bangor-to-portpatrick-photos/
Our planned 10.45 departure was delayed by about 30 mins waiting to get on the fuel pontoon, but got going about 11.45. The sunny morning became damp and miserable. We started with a bit of sailing, but once past the island at the Southern end of Belfast Lough the wind was light and dead behind us. Before long our estimated arrival time was going beyond the 16.00 deadline to get into Portpatrick.all the advice is to not to attempt to enter the harbour entrance between 2hrs before or after LW at 16.00. We also hadn’t taken into the strong tide that we were crossing. We had to motor hard to achieve around 16.00 crabbing along the straight line across. The Irish Sea gets incredibly deep with the chart showing about 267m. My echo sounder lost the bottom at 181m.
We pushed on through some heavy showers, arriving at Portpatrick entrance at 16.15. Our shallow draft made entry easy, We found the harbour empty apart from 4 small fishing boats, and moored up against the wall. Once there we discovered we had neighbours of a Pigeon and Gilimot nests in holes gin the wall.
Today we are heading for Lamlash on the Isle of Arran